"In 2005, teaching a history class to university juniors and seniors, I mentioned the Vietnam War. I noticed glazed looks in the eyes of several students. I asked a young woman born about a decade after that war had ended: “You know when the Vietnam War occurred, right?”
She wrinkled her brow, bit her lip and said, hesitatingly: “Wasn’t it after the Greco-Roman era?”
Some students knew, but most were unsure. Neither parents nor teachers had taught them recent history. A new film will now help fill that void.
“The Most Dangerous Man in America” (produced by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith; photography by Vicente Franco) earned his film title from those in the heights of power--not by robbing banks or committing serial murders; rather, he revealed US government secrets.
Ironically, our enemies (the Soviet Union and China at the time) had no interest in the “top secret” documents Daniel Ellsberg (the film’s narrator) leaked to the media and Congress in 1971 as “The Pentagon Papers.” The US public, however, should have responded to the contents of those seven thousand super classified pages with shock and anger.
The Papers showed the government had lied to Congress and the public about its reasons for invading Vietnam. The Papers also demonstrated that behind the “stop communism from causing Asian nations to topple like dominoes” rhetoric lay deeper US imperial ambitions that policy makers had pushed for fifteen years. Presidents Johnson and Nixon didn’t send men to die for freedom or for any moral purpose.
When the NY Times and subsequently other major papers published these Papers, their editorials did not stress the outrage they and all citizens should have felt over official prevarication and manipulation. Instead of calling for immediate withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam, in light of the truth that neither the Soviets nor Chinese controlled the Vietnamese communists and that Vietnam posed no domino threat in Asia, the newspapers patted themselves on the back for their “courage” in daring to print classified documents."
So begins a piece on CounterPunch by Saul Landau on the recently released film "The Most Dangerous Man in the World" - that is, Daniel Elsberg in the early 1970's when he had the so-called Pentagon Papers published.
Read on, here, for a glimpse at history in the making some 30+ years ago.
She wrinkled her brow, bit her lip and said, hesitatingly: “Wasn’t it after the Greco-Roman era?”
Some students knew, but most were unsure. Neither parents nor teachers had taught them recent history. A new film will now help fill that void.
“The Most Dangerous Man in America” (produced by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith; photography by Vicente Franco) earned his film title from those in the heights of power--not by robbing banks or committing serial murders; rather, he revealed US government secrets.
Ironically, our enemies (the Soviet Union and China at the time) had no interest in the “top secret” documents Daniel Ellsberg (the film’s narrator) leaked to the media and Congress in 1971 as “The Pentagon Papers.” The US public, however, should have responded to the contents of those seven thousand super classified pages with shock and anger.
The Papers showed the government had lied to Congress and the public about its reasons for invading Vietnam. The Papers also demonstrated that behind the “stop communism from causing Asian nations to topple like dominoes” rhetoric lay deeper US imperial ambitions that policy makers had pushed for fifteen years. Presidents Johnson and Nixon didn’t send men to die for freedom or for any moral purpose.
When the NY Times and subsequently other major papers published these Papers, their editorials did not stress the outrage they and all citizens should have felt over official prevarication and manipulation. Instead of calling for immediate withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam, in light of the truth that neither the Soviets nor Chinese controlled the Vietnamese communists and that Vietnam posed no domino threat in Asia, the newspapers patted themselves on the back for their “courage” in daring to print classified documents."
So begins a piece on CounterPunch by Saul Landau on the recently released film "The Most Dangerous Man in the World" - that is, Daniel Elsberg in the early 1970's when he had the so-called Pentagon Papers published.
Read on, here, for a glimpse at history in the making some 30+ years ago.
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